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A Look Inside Newegg
An anonymous reader writes "AnandTech has an interesting look inside Newegg's 180,000 square foot facility. Effectively, they followed the path of an order after it was soon placed online. AnandTech was able to get a tour of their facilities before, but this is the first time they allowed them to publish any photos."
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Find the lowest prices or Buy it from Amazon for $638.98
Best investment ever.
shouldn't this be under the Special Advertising Section?
Do you even lift?
These aren't the 'roids you're looking for.
"Established in 2001, Newegg has quickly become a household name among AnandTech readers. They originally won the hearts of many readers by offering extremely competitive prices and keeping customer service a top priority. Since their humble beginnings the company has grown tremendously, with net sales in 2005 of approximately $1.3 billion, a 30% increase over the prior year. Newegg currently stocks over 60,000 different products and ships up to 25,000 orders per day, 98% of them within 24 hours."
Does this not scream advertisement to anybody else? While it is somewhat cool to see what happens once orders placed, this stinks of a "sponsored article"
Seriously "A pallet is a wooden or plastic platform that can be picked up using a forklift; palletized cargo is cargo placed on a pallet, which is how Newegg's inventory is shipped to them." is considered a story?
"Recently AnandTech got a chance to tour some of Microsoft's offices. Established in 1981, many AnandTech readers will be familiar with Microsoft for offering innovative products, pushing the envelope in the software industry, and their advantage over Linux products in terms of TCO."
Error 407 - No creative sig found
If I'm buying for myself, it's probably not going to be from New Egg. I can usually get the same stuff elsewhere on the net for less money.
If I'm buying for work, I've got a list of approved vendors from the bean counters- *eye roll* and New Egg isn't nearly stuffy enough and hasn't bought any of the bean counters lunch often enough to make it on their list (just my best guess at how vendors are selected).
It's nice that they have wicked cool facility, but if you really want to see some supply chain stuff in action, visit Wal-mart. Now you can order any thing off the Walmart web site and have it delivered free to your local Walmart. Show me how those orders are processed, and as much as I hate Walmart, you'll definitely have my attention.
2 cents,
Queen B
HDGary secures my bank
As someone who works next door to Buy.com's corporate office (they're in 85, we're in 65, effectively next door) - I'd rather see their corporate office than the warehouse. Come on, how many Ferraris are in the parking lot?
Mooniacs for iOS and Android
I imagined an intricate facitility, but wow! NewEgg is the ONLY website I order hardware from online, and it has never failed me. This is like when you watch the discovery channel and learn the entire manufacturing process behind a simple piece of candy.
Comment removed based on user account deletion
It'd be a lot more impressive if NewEgg didn't charge an extra $2.99 to "rush process" your order (this appears to be the charge to make sure that they don't just sit on your order for a day for no reason), and also if NewEgg didn't randomly tag on a Ziff-Davis subscription to your order. (You don't want it? Just print out a form, and send it along with a self-addressed stamped envelope to get your money back.) Newegg used to be great. These days they're the textbook definition of a company that's forgotten the consumer.
Not satan, just stan :)
:P.
I live in St. Louis, when I order from them, it arrives in 3 business days EVERY TIME, with just plain standard Fedex shipping. Whether or not I'm at home at the 2pm pickup is another story
And, of course, loyal to their 180,000 square feet (with a comma for thousands and the imperial system), they do not sell overseas, neither the contest is open for non-americans.
Fuck newegg too.
Comment removed based on user account deletion
It's like pure untouched snow, just waiting to be pissed on. And I say that with the best of intentions, as every year, I spell out
[Fuck Beta]
o0t!
I dunno, as somebody who gets paid to help businesses, I'm not so sure this should be posted under advertising, maybe wishes come true. Oh for a chance to really get a good in depth look at their back office operations. Ya never know when you'ld learn something new you could use. Though, one can't blame them if they are taking advantage of it for some advertising lol.
funarcadeonline.com
cause i suspect their boxes are gonna get slashdotted soon. it's like a geeks wet dream, pictures of a warehouse full of parts :O
Why don't they show pictures of the return department and how it functions? Surely they must have some advanced way of handling the amounts of returns they get. My friend recently bought all the parts for his computer on New Egg. They had advertised a power supply as having dual 12v rails and it only had one when he got it. The DVD burner they sent him was DOA. These are minor issues that plague all vendors of IT equipment, however New Egg claims to provide such great quality for that extra couple dollars you spend. I guess I'm just not seeing the inherent value. What I must add is that New Egg has been known to have one of the best return policies anywhere, this is why I want to see how their return system works!
Here is the <a href="http://www.anandtech.com/printarticle.aspx?<nobr>i<wbr></wbr></nobr> =2694" title="Ad Free Article.">bloat free article</a>, without the ads and extra addage.
Pat
Of course, with all the approving posts so far this'll pretty much be another football field worth of astroturfing, but I've been impressed in my dealings with them.
I'm currently participating in a PC Building class (hey, I figured I could at least get a nice PC out of my soon-to-be-crippling college loans), and we ordered nearly $10,000 in parts for everyone's machines. Everything arrived ahead of time, and the only broken items were the front doors on 2 of the antec cases we ordered (and those cases were known to have shitty doors. Great cases otherwise).
We did have to go around with their billing department a bit though since I guess they take a very hard look at orders as large as ours. They thought we were committing credit card fraud or something.
Still no USPS shippment. I still haven't figured out why NewEgg isn't offerring USPS shippment as an option. Surely they say, "Free Shipping" as some kind of marketing term, but we all know that's not entirely true. In my experience with USPS, especially Priority Mail and light weight shippment below 5 lbs, it's been cheaper, reliable, and no hassle; beating out on FedEx and UPS.
Or maybe it's just me having bad experience with UPS and FedEx delivery.
"Don't let fools fool you. They are the clever ones."
Newegg's Return Policy stinks. They charge 15% restocking fees, and if you get a defective item, you have to pay return shipping. They are a big enough company to afford not charging restocking fees. I try not to purchase from Newegg whenever possible. They are not a good deal anymore anyways.
When Firefly premiered, I submitted a gushing story to Slashdot. (I had seen a bootleg of the pilot, and had been blow away by it; the actual series was rather less exciting.) There must have been 20 posts by people who were convinced that I was a sock puppet in the employ of Fox. None of them bothered to check my post history.
Sock puppets do exist. I've even been fooled by them. But in a consumer culture where people where company logos as a "personal statement", you shouldn't be suprised to see a little uncritical praise now and then.
As most of us have order computer hardware online, it isn't difficult to find a store that sucks. Newegg has been a gem among shady, poorly supported, and otherwise lacking stores. To see how this organization works and makes what they do happen is not only an interesting read as a customer of newegg but as a nerd who wants to know how they do this stuff!
Click on the picture with all the employees. Wow, that's a lot of Asians.
Gah! Advertisement drones have infiltrated slashdot!
PS, I'm a real person and I love Newegg
for serious
You'd thinking with that hardware and those warehouses they could ship items out in a timely fashion. As a last resort I have ordered several times from them, and you have no clue what day they will actually ship product. They drop ship alot of items, say from Ingram Micro or what have you, but don't even pick the closest warehouse. I can order from alot of other companies, for less money, and they ship out the same day I order. I know from what warehouse, I know what day it arrives. The $2.99 express fee is bogus. They use smoke and mirrors, make the whole process seem magical. Just ship the d*mn product! That's all we ask. Many times, even if an item is "in stock" it really isn't, I don't want to backorder an item, I can do that from a dozen different places, I'm ordering because I need the product! Don't even get me started on their lame search, unless you google the item, and search for the exact manufacturer part # forget about finding a decent result. Thank goodness I've never had to return a product, I can only imagine how much of a hassle that would be if it's this hard to buy a product.
You can tell the age of internet companies by their names. All the ones started after the good domain names were taken have strange names like "Newegg".
"They charge 15% restocking fees, and if you get a defective item, you have to pay return shipping."
A lot of companies are like that. Mot just Newegg. I had to pay shipping on my NEC monitor for example, and you should have heard what they were going to charge me for an empty carboard box with packing foam, untill I proved that it was under warrenty. Same with my IBM Deathstars.
Yes! and: Don't trust their user reviews; I complained that I was misled, and got this back: " Regarding the reviews of the products, please note, however, that customer reviews are used at the discretion of Newegg as a marketing device for positive and constructive ways to share the benefit of a product. It is not used as a source for negative commentary as we cannot endorse the validity of any negative comment. Therefore, Newegg is moderated to remove any unproven biased negative comments. " but of course they didn't post this at the top of the review pages. So I thought it was just all glowing, not really a piece of crap, like it turned out to be; and yes I also lost the restock fee and postage too.
Ok now that I have your attention, I would like to point that although I can purchase from Newegg using my credit card for our school (which I will be forced to do unfortunately), Newegg will not accept PO's from our University, UC Santa Barbara. I love newegg and buy plenty of equipment from them, for myself. However, they are sitting on a goldmine and I am forced to do business with the likes of CDWG, Zones, and Tigerdirect because of their policy of not accepting PO's from Universities. I've called them a few times and told them to escalate this issue and address it to their management. They told me to go through a convoluted process, and obviously other people have come to this crossroads, so management never sees this issue come up, mainly because no one really goes through the process. If the Tier 1 customer service cared enough they should escalate this issue to their management, but unfortunately I haven't been able to talk to any management. Very fishy. So after all my b+'ing, I still do business with them personally, nothing really beats Newegg.
Insinct is stronger than Upbringing - Irish Proverb
"The pick and pack process for Newegg really isn't that interesting though. You'll find the same kind of setup in a lot of warehouses. Small warehouses wont have an automated conveyer system and a lot of large warehouses wont have as fancy a system though."
Agreeded. I've worked a lot of warehouses and Newegg's setup is similiar to one at a company I use to work for about five years ago. The only new thing to me was the box maker. The really interesting geeky parts is what one doesn't see. The computers and software that makes logistics work. That's also the part that falls under trade secrets.
And it isn't even a very interesting fulfilment operation. It's a manual bin picking operation using conveyors, with computers telling the people what to do. This is relatively standard; nothing exciting here.
Yes, they have a trash compactor for recycling cardboard. Like every big box-break operation in the developed world.
I almost always buy from Newegg and recommend to others.
Even though their prices are slightly higher, I know they will take any doa hardware back without asking too many questions or making me jump through hoops.
One time I ordered a refurb aopen cube pc from newegg(for $100 less than new) and it arrived with everything included, manuals, cables, etc. No scratches on the case or any broken or missing parts.
A month later I ordered a "NEW" barebones system from Tiger Direct and it came banged up so bad that I couldn't even close the case properly. Cardboard box was not damaged so it was definitely broken when they shipped it. Never got my rebate either.
The moral of the story is stick with the good guys, even if it costs $3 or $5 more per item. The last thing you want to do is get stuck with a lemon pc accessory because you get "sorry, we can't take it back once it's opened, try the manufacturer" from some crappy dealer or "that will be 15% restocking fee"
or "contact UPS, they probably broke it during shipping"
Oh, they are giving away several AMD X2 4800 CPUs (RTFA, click on TFL)
so put your email address and wait. (don't use your work address since they will send some spam - newegg newsletter)
I've been spending money at NewEgg for about two years, though I've been aware of them and lurked for a while before then. I've been quite happy with all of my purchases, and except for one instance on a DVD-R drive RMA (at 8 or 10 months old) the process for everything, including returns, has been pretty fast. Not all of my stuff ships same-day, but except in the most extreme circumstances, that's OK. Many of the things do ship same day, and living in Orange County, CA, the La Puente warehouse is next day by ground.
I've had great experiences with their customer service, I'm impressed by their prices overall. My only complaint is that shipping is sometimes a bit steep considering I'm less than 75 miles from their warehouse and I also have to pay California sales tax. Overall though, I still give them my business after 2 years. Not a bad deal.
At least, I don't think so.
I personally do most of my shopping at NewEgg (occasionally ZipZoomFly or, in a pinch, Best Buy if I need something from a brick and mortar store), and so does just about everybody I know that needs computer hardware. We're in Arizona - I've personally always gotten my shipment from their CA warehouse, regardless of the item ordered, and I have a tracking number within 24 hours.
And everybody I know gets their items in 3 days. Consistently.
Maybe it's just the location, but we've had nothing but good service and shipping times on orders.
And I've never had a backorder on anything I've ordered that was listen "In Stock." Sorry about your bad luck, though.
While I use and recommend Newegg, my wife's parents ordered a printer and a digital camera.
The printer didn't work, but Canon resolved that. The box that the camera was empty... claimed it weighed several pounds, but it was nothing but peanuts. The first call to Newegg seemed like they would actually ship the camera, but it took 3 more calls for them to actually do so. I was pretty shocked about that.
They won't buy from Newegg again... which is too bad, I still consider them to be one of the best online retailers. This means they'll instead drive over to Best Buy...
Hunt your preferred prey at Aliens vs Predator MUD. Join the war at avpmud.com port 4000
Isn't mwave.com better than Newegg?
I thought their customer service was supposed to be better.
http://www.thebricktestament.com/the_law/when_to_
DigiKey.
Check out the Thief River Falls plant sometime. Whoa.
Here's the linkified link (posted using "Plain Old Text"): bloat free article
Believe it or not, this isn't a troll. From about 1993 - 1999 there were dozens of printed catalogs that offered overnight (technically same-day) shipping if you placed your order before 2AM EST. For $3 your package was delivered by Airborne Express (now DHL) by 10AM that SAME DAY! I ordered many computer parts over the phone around the 2AM deadline and had them in my hand just 8 hours later. And this was to Fargo, North Dakota. Amazing IMHO.
The first time I took advantage of this crazy fast, crazy cheap shipping was when I bought my Newton PDA in 1994. I remember placing my order around 11 PM and paying with the Newton the next morning just after breakfast. I think I ordered it from MicroWarehouse/MacWarehouse. This was many years before the dot-com boom, so I'm still a little baffled at how so many companies were able to update print 200+ page catalogs every month and still offer such awesome shipping.
As far as I can tell, this all ended around the time of the dot com bubble burst. What I don't really understand is why. Or why they didn't just up the shipping charge to $6 or downgrade to overnight instead of overnight-priority shipping. 4 PM the next day isn't a whole lot worse than 10 AM the next day.
I miss those days. Now it seems like NewEgg's 1 - 2 day order turnaround + freeish FedEx 3-day shpping is the best I can find in the same price ballpark. I can usually order from NewEgg on a Monday morning, opt for the Free to $5 shipping, and have the item by Thursday afternoon. Good but still nothing like the 8 hour delivery I experienced for most of the 1990s. Now with online ordering, better tracking/sorting, and greater package delivery competition you would think that $3 - $7 overnight shipping would still be a possibility. Or at the very least, give me back the 2AM cutoff again instead of this 5PM sillyness.
"Sure, I could always get a friend to do it for me, but that's never as convenient as a business, that would be accessible more easily."
You mean like the way some online pharmacies ship Canadian drugs to the US?
Did anyone else ever just assume that NewEgg was kind of the reincarnation of our once dearly beloved EggHead (BEFORE amazon bought them and ruined them?)
I mean, look at the similarities: great prices, fast shipping, super service, free crap (t-shirts, pens...) At one point, the site even felt very much like the once-glorious EggHead!
Just a thought...didn't know if I was alone in that!
Hmm, I ordered five items a few weeks ago, total shipping of like $25, or $5 per item even though it totalled about three pounds. The "3 day" UPS shipping took five days for two of the items, which were ALL shipped separately.
I like Newegg's products selection and reliability, and the prices are okay (no good computer stores local to me), but not being able to combine shipping costs is crumby, and the shipping options stink.
NewEgg has never taken more than 5 days for me. It's usually about 3 or 4. Sometimes 2 days.
Depending on what time of day you order, they usually package up your goodies on the same day. Standard "freeish" (sometimes they charge for certain items) FedEx 3-day shipping takes 1 - 3 days depending on where you live and how busy FedEx is.
The beauty of FedEx is they're designed for overnight shipping. Packages shipped 2-day or 3-day are usually sorted after the overnight packages and often make it in time for overnight shipping. Again it depends on how busy FedEx and how far they have to fly their planes. More distance = less time for sorting.
Rush Processing is only handy if you order late in the day or if you're ordering on a very busy day. Otherwise they usually get your order packaged up that same day. $3 is a little much in my opinion. In the 1992 - 2000 glory days of catalogs like MicroWarehouse/MacWarehouse, PCMall, etc, you could place your order by 2AM and have it delivered by Airborne/DHL that same day by 10AM. Shipping usually cost $3 for the entire order, no matter how much you ordered.
or does this article remind you of the episode where the simpsons visted the box factory ?
Where's the picture of the UPS goons handing stacks of hundreds over to Newegg VP's?
If you've been a custome of Newegg for more than six months, you know what I'm talking about.
"It is seldom that liberty of any kind is lost all at once." -David Hume
How does a jar of pickles help make boxes?g g/automaticboxmaker.jpg
http://images.anandtech.com/reviews/IT/InsideNewe
my mother ordered a dvd burner from newegg on 1-18-06. she called on 1-23-06.customer service said that they did not recieve the order yet the already withdrew the money.it says 3 day shipping, perhaps they ment 300 days? lol seriously i have dealt with newegg more than a few times they have a track record similar to dells *shivers*. if i want/need a part now i look for a local store at least i don't have to worry about an order being lost.
I find that most really cool technology that actually gets deployed in a working environment either works and thus never gets upgraded, or sucks and has to be completely replaced.
That was a typo, I was *playing* with the Newton the next morning.
DigiKey is located in tiny Thief River Falls, Minnesota... about half an hour from Grand Forks, North Dakota and about 90 minutes from Fargo, North Dakota. They have a huge complex of warehouses full of electronic components. Every chip, diode, resistor, LED, sensor, etc etc etc you could ever imagine. Their print catalog is two inches thick and doesn't even contain half of their inventory! I've never toured their warehouse, but based on their inventory and quick shipping I can only imagine how awesome it must be!!
Agreed. When I worked for a university, the only company that accepted POs from us were the laboratory supply companies that surely get a large portion of their income from the academic market.
University POs are disastrous; the average processing time was about a month and sometimes they never got paid at all.
Just because they shipped what you ordered and your purchased items work as designed doesn't make a great retailer. I don't understand these NewEgg fanatic boosters ("I ordered 'x', it arrived and it works! NewEgg is FANTASTIC!!!"). Geez. The best way to evaluate an on-line retailer is to see how they react when there is a problem with your order. This is particularly true when the fault is purely with the retailer.
I've had some experience with NewEgg in this area and frankly NewEgg stinks. You can find better customer policies elsewhere at similar prices.
If I place my order early in the morning, it almost always gets shipped that same day. The longest it ever took NewEgg to get my order to me was 5 business days.
"Also I use the $2.99 "expedite my order" feature to get them to ship the same day (of course i make sure i order early enough)"
Do you also check that box on your tax form that says "donate $3 to the presidential campaign fund"? The suggestion is that it somehow affects your taxes, but of course it doesn't. You just pay an extra $3.
Coincidentally, that's pretty much all that checkbox is at Newegg either. They may as well label it "Check here to pay $3 more for your order." Try not checking it some time - you'll be surprised that your order still arrives just as quickly.
But since its inception, what seperated Newegg from every other low-cost web retailer was the organization of their site. If you want to browse products, it's so freakin' easy pick a category/subcategory and narrow the choices down based on features you are looking for. I can't believe other sites haven't gotten this right yet (Mwave is okay).
For example, Buy.com has great prices for some items, especially when a heavy item qualifies for free shipping. But try browsing Buy.com's selection of 1GB DDR2 memory kits (2x512MB) or their selection of motherboards with socket 939, microATX form factor, nForce4 chipset, and 4 dimm slots. At Newegg, it's a snap.
The first time I browsed Newegg, the categorization of their inventory was as impressive to me as Yahoo's.
TO START
PRESS ANY KEY
Where's the 'ANY' key? I see Esk, Kitarl, and Pig-Up...
A year ago I ordered serveral parts, including a case from newegg. I didn't really think about it much, but cases might not be the best thing to ship via your average UPS or Fedex etc. Anyways it arrives and the front panel is busted up. Cracked and inoperable. I read the website's procedure, followed the directions and eventually called newegg's help line. I inform them of this and rather than have me ship the whole thing back at my cost, they take my word for it and send me a new panel. Three days later I have a new panel and a working computer. I still won't be ordering cases online anymore, but that's just because its hard to really evaluate a case design from a webpage.
So has Newegg fallen to new lows since I ordered? Am I lying or simply remembering something false? Or perhaps taking a single anecdote as a trend is simply bad logic.
I Browse at +4 Flamebait
Open Source Sysadmin
I remember back in the early 90's when you could order something and pay for it c.o.d. (cash) and not have to wait all day long to get your item delivered, they would almost always get to your house at the same time, hell I even made friends with one of the UPS drivers because he was always coming to my house often. Those days are gone because of the internet, everyone and their uncle orders stuff on the internet these days, the amount of items being shipped has probably grown about 1000x times since then. That's why....too many people now.... bad for us, good for the delivery companies. Newegg still ships to me just as fast as they always have, but I don't care for UPS that much, too many damaged shipment. In fact, last week I ordered a new cable modem. I knew it was coming that day, I waited for it. I heard the UPS driver pull up to the house, I went to the door and stood there and waited for him to knock.....well, he didn't knock and he just left the box sitting on my porch. I live on a busy street, anyone could come by and rip the package off. ..it kinda ticks me off that I pay good money to have something shipped and they can't even knock or leave it in the door. Now fedex on the other hand is what I call a real delivery service. They knock on your door, they make you sign for the package and if you aren't there they come back the next day. They even say "have a nice day!" UPS never does that, and trust me, I've dealt with UPS many thousands of time, at my residence and at work. It's amazing how they have went downhill.
Getting back to UPS and Newegg, if you want the cheaper shipping at newegg, you gotta go UPS, otherwise Fedex costs a little more.
Don't like Newegg? Try Mwave.com out, they've been in business alot longer than Newegg and they use fedex. Prices are about the same and sometimes cheaper than Newegg.
~Later~
I bet the only latino and black workers they hire are their janitors
The PLCs (Programmable Logic Controllers) and the automation of the "Picker" system.
Namely, product on the floor, not on pallets. This may seem like an odd requirement until you realize that fire hoses leak more often than they are used to put out fires. Also a forklift is less likely to crush something sitting on a pallet.
Product in the rack storage area above head height should be wrapped. I believe this is an OSHA requirement. Even if not, packaging can be damaged if it falls to the floor. And while the packaging is no doubt designed for impact resistance, no one wants the can of beans with the dent in it, nor the dented scratched up box, reagrdless of what's inside.
Garage bay doors should not be open unless they are blocked with security gates. This keeps people from falling off the dock as well as lowers the point of breach. The box recycler is also another point of interest. I wonder how many pieces of memeory end up in the crusher.
And while this may be an advertising ploy, no doubt someone at newegg will see this thread. Hopefully they improve upon their environment.
Someone hates these cans.
New Egg sent me the wrong product - twice! They seem to have this little issue where if model numbers are similar, they send you the product of their choice (not necesarily what you ordered).
I wasn't very happy when I returned it, only to have it come back AGAIN!
I ended up ordering from zipzoomfly and haven't looked back. They have an actual warehouse and very accurate "in stock/out of stock" monitoring.
I did not appreciate the nearly month of downtime afforded to me by newegg. Yuck.
Spoon not. Fork, or fork not. There is no spoon.
Maybe he delivers fast and good in your lifetime, but after your death you will find out that you forgot to ask him for his interest rate.
No, you don't -- $3 of your taxes are donated to the campaign fund. You don't pay an extra $3. Try it with Tax software and you will find that this is correct.
I hate when they won't just leave the package. I can understand if they'd like to get something in writing saying that they're not liable for the package once it is out of their hands, but let me fax them some standard form, which they can keep on file. No one in my house is ever home during business hours, and my wife's job doesn't allow personal packages to be sent to her work address, and my job has such over active security (everything has to be hand checked, and put through a metal detector/xray by security), that there are packages I wouldn't and can't have come to work.
Around here, UPS never just drops the package --except when it is an amazon super-saver (although fedex will most of the time), I will actually not shop at online stores who's shippers have given me the "will try again X# of times" slip --I'm simply not going to be home.
------- Oh damn.... the Sigfile escaped... -Great OM
Whereas Newegg's free shipping is now almost non-existent (since about a year ago) and they add the $3-$5 shipping fee FOR EACH ITEM ORDERED. So buy 5 SD cards, pay $4 shipping for each = $20 bucks shipping.
If only Newegg would open up to international shipping. . .
one thing that pisses me off is they don't combine shipping fees.
I bought a sata hard drive from them. $4.99 for 3 day shipping.
Then I added a sata power adapter cable to the order for $2.49 and they charged me another $4.99 for shipping on a cable that weighs about 2 ounces and cost half of the shipping fee. And they just threw it loose in the box with the OEM drive in the peanuts. Didn't cost them a f*cking red cent more in shipping to throw that in like they did. I was PISSED and still am about this.
They could have added like 50 cents to the shipping and that would have been fair but double the cost of the item? And an item that weighs less than a hummingbird fart? Come on....
Do NOT order anything from them on Friday and expect to get it on Monday via their "3 day shipping" promise. They won't even begin to process the order until Monday and it won't leave Newegg until Tuesday and if all goes well, you should get it by Thursday evening. That's damn near 7 day shipping. They should give you a better rate if they are going to handle it like that or at least tell you what to expect on Friday orders.
But, if you order on Sunday night you can get your stuff in 3 days as promised.
OTOH, their prices are as good as anywhere else and I've never gotten any duds from them yet. For the most part I like them. I just am pissed over the shipping fees and policies on little items like above.
BTW, I'll never do biz with Tiger Direct, they screwed me real good.
I ordered a PC case from them. Tiger sent it to UPS. UPS told them that they weren't delivering to my area because of hurricane damage (which was bullshit, UPS WAS delivering to this area because I had a UPS delivery the day before)
UPS sent the case back to Tiger. Tiger told me it was undeliverable and refunded my money for the case but they kept the $19 shipping charges. F&cking asshole thieves.
I ended up ordering a better case for $5 less from Newegg and Newegg only charged me $9 shipping and had it to me in three days. A much better deal. Tigerdirect can lick my dog's ass.
I used to order from Outpost (Frys) but with Newegg I don't have to pay tax and the prices are competitive. YAY! for out of state purchasing!
There's an old ComputerWorld story that highlights how Wal-Mart was able to revamp their supply chain by essentially opening up their inventory and sales information down to the individual item. Combine this with their RFID initiative and they've also got a better way to track back room shrinkage in addition to a much more efficient mechanism for tracking individual items than scanning pallet barcodes ..
.. I think you'll find a similar model in many of the large IT houses and how they're farming out labor costs associated with various code bases (both open and closed source) .. another chapter in the hands that built america ..
As for delivery, take a look at this Frontline PBS special
I think it ought to illegal to refuse to ship via USPS. At the very least, it should be illegal to make me fill out a long-assed order form only to find at the end that the company is too ornery to ship to a PO Box. Buy a stamp, dude. How tough could it be?
I hope you don't work for the junk faxers at Ellipsis. If you do, then please burn in hell. If you don't, then, um, nevermind. :)
Maybe you work for Microdesk or SiJAM? I guess there are a good number of other businesses there.
Ingram Micro has been doing this for years, and on a MUCH larger scale. I'd bet Ingram
supplies Newegg. Thet supply their nearest competitor, Tech Data.
A big problem with Newegg is that they advertise a good price for an item, and then force you to pay more than the real cost of shipping for many items.
When I find a company that makes a profit on shipping, I usually just close that tab on my browser.
However, there are good deals at Newegg when the shipping cost is low. And, Fry's and CompOOZA are usually even more adversarial.
Since I found NewEgg a year ago (through Slashdot), I've placed over a dozen orders with them, both for work and personal orders. Only had one problem with a shipment, one of five hard drives was DOA. I filled out the online RMA request, shipped it back that day, and got a replacement within three business days (cross-shipped I think). I am *really* happy with NewEgg prices and reliability.
Compare to Fry's, Best Buy, Good Guys.
I will not shop at TigerDirect since the whole Mac OS X "Tiger" "I'm-an-attention-whore" lawsuit.
Everyone is entitled to his own opinions, but not his own facts.
Cheers! I ordered a shipment via FedEx overnight for the day after Thanksgiving. UPS wouldn't deliver that day. We spent the whole day at home, except when I chased the FedEx truck down the street. Despite making several calls to FedEx customer support, where they were all smiles, and zero help (and changed their story every ten minutes), I was obliged to drive to the FedEx facility and pick up the package myself with fifteen minutes to spare (needed for gift wrapping). The whole experience was so fustrating I was spitting sparks. With a new baby, we had been getting FedEx packages every couple weeks for several months so why did they say we had an invalid address??
Everyone is entitled to his own opinions, but not his own facts.
Having frequently purchased things from Newegg.com and been relatively satisfied with being close enough to one of their warehouses to get overnight ground shipping on the cheap, I was recently horrified to discover that they have quietly changed the way they offer shipping in order to pad their own pockets. In case you haven't noticed, Newegg.com no longer offers UPS Ground as a shipping option. They have instead created a new service called "UPS 3-day Guaranteed," which, if you read the terms, basically says that you have to pay for UPS 3-Day Select, but will still get ground shipping if you are close enough to receive your order in 3 days or less. For people like me, that equates to a tripling of shipping charges and nothing else. Newegg.com could not be reached for comment as of the writing of this story. Am I the only one who is outraged?
It is great to know there is a factory for manufacturing feet, even if they are square, but you know what it is they say about plugs.
That lasted well into the dot-com boom; in 1999, Outpost.com announced free overnight shipping until midnight (I believe PST!). How did they do it? They kept their inventory AT the Airborne Express hub, and had Airborne do the fulfillment for them.
But there were also weekly articles in Wired, C-Net, etc. talking about how all these companies were losing money on shipping. Most of the companies that offered this either went out of business or got bought out by someone else who didn't share the business model - I remember one "lowest price guarantee" site that was bought out by a major retail chain and, overnight, raised their prices nearly to street level.
I don't think that charging $6 for overnight would have reduced their costs enough to keep them in business, especially now that fuel surcharges have increased so drastically. I'm sure shipping in bulk, and with logistical assistance, costs a fraction of what an individual pays, but FedEx can cost $30 to $40 for a lightweight overnight package. I don't think the software and hardware retailers have high enough margins to absorb that.
Is that Newegg actually makes boxes to fit in-house.
This article is clearly a promotion for newegg.com -- I mean, they even promote a freakin contest over at new egg for a Athlon 64 4600+ ! http://promotions.newegg.com/NEPro/AnandTech//inde x.html
I've worn a lot of hats over the years, including as an end user with a large university (the guy who needs stuff) and later as a guy working at a vendor who sells stuff. Here's the scoop.
As an end user, you've usually got four purchasing options:
1) Petty cash. For very tiny things. Pointless to this discussion, and still involves lots of careful receipt-handling rules.
2) School-issued credit cards. Only people way up the food chain get to use these. Purchasing agents in the school's procurement office get to use them, and sometimes people who work in travel offices, or that coordinate events, etc., do, or deans and whatnot. Generally there are very tight rules about how these can be used, and that's usually never for things like a shiny new computer monitor or the like.
3) Small, "casual" Purchase Orders. Usually these are limited to a few hundred dollars or so. The end user has to request the use of them, but then gets handed something more or less like a blank ticket that has a spending limit on it. Many vendors won't take these because they're not already assigned, by the school's procurement office, to the vendor... which means the there may be bumps in the road getting it actually paid.
4) Serious POs. These are the ones that come out of the procurement office after the purchasing agent has shopped around to make sure the end user is making a rational request, after some bids (either over the phone, or more formally on paper) have been reviewed, and so on. If you're wondering why these take so long, it's because when a state school (which is really the state government) decides to buy something, there are a jillion rules at play. Has the vendor been filing state taxes correctly? Has the vendor been keeping up with state regulations on hiring quotas, manadatory cardboard recycling, health insurance regs, etc? Yes: purchasing agents spending bigger-ticket amounts of tax money have to check ALL of that crap. And you can only imagine what happens if some of the funds involved happen in to include some federal support for the school's program(s). Suddenly the vendor has to pass all sorts of federal tests, as well. All of that has to be established before the PO is cut to the vendor. And if there's some comparison shopping to be done (this is usually required by law), the purchasing agent may have to actually advertise that the school's about to spend $50,000 on some capital item, and allow a certain amount of time to pass so that all potential vendors can respond with a proposal.
Now: suppose you're a vendor. Think of the time you've got to invest in presenting a friendly face to that process. Then, imagine that the school's policy is to review all shipments before even beginning to start the process of paying the bill to the vendor... but the purchasing agent can't certify that the shipment even GOT to the school, with the right stuff in the box, in good shape, until the end user (and/or his supervisor, dean, etc) signs off on the circulating paperwork. Never mind if the product has some OSHA issues, or HAZMAT considerations to slow all of that down. Finally, the end user's receipt paperwork gets back to the purchasing agent, who then sends the paperwork to the school's accounting people, who have to match it up with the filed invoice from the vendor, and then they schedule a payment for some number of days in the future... thus giving them time to check whether the vendor is or is not on some shit-list about some other transaction having gone well or poorly, thus holding up the payment.
You get the idea. The life cycle on these things is horrific, and vendors have to really want to do that business, and be willing to float the money, usually for months, before getting paid. If even ONE aspect of the end user's paperwork isn't just right, the vendor often does NOT get paid. Now, combine all of that with an industry like selling motherboards at very low margins... and remember that the company (like Newegg) has to honor (or even beat) their advertised
Don't disappoint your bird dog. Go to the range.
This is as "magical" as going to work when I was in college. This looks just like the place I used to work at, only instead of really neat computer gizmos we sold rediculously expensive airplane parts. They're proud because the size and weight of an object is associated with a bar code? Try getting a FAA form 8130 tied to every serialized part in the warehouse and a chain of these documenting the parts from its origin (you can tell pretty much which mine the alluminum came from) and every step of its journey and then I'll be impressed. Until then, it's just a big box that does what every comparable big box does. Oh, and we used to get yelled at if 100% of our items weren't shipped that day.
Jester
Warning: This sig may be legally binding in England.
That's a pretty interesting setup and way beyond what I had thought NewEgg was accomplishing at this point.
[%] Cingular Ringtones
As far as I can tell, this all ended around the time of the dot com bubble burst. What I don't really understand is why.
Let me refresh my memory. This was the same time period where people thought that paying shipping on 25 pound bag of dog food instead of buying it at the local store was a good idea, and that buying furniture from a 100x200 pixel picture with a 10x10 color swatch AND paying shipping to your house was a good idea, etc? Right?
Back then, everybody and their redheaded stepchild thought that you could make millions because you could sell stuff (insert drumroll here) ONLINE!
Shipping was one of the biggest issues with any non-local purchase, and back then people with all of their startup money were very aggressive about being competitive with the other etailers, and regular retailers. Now that the number of online companies have shrunk and their average size has increased, we are back to the mail order business model of the 80s. Either spend a bunch of money and get "free" shipping, or you've gotta pay.
Its just dollars and cents.
I know NewEgg is not the cheapest, but they're the cheapest vendor that I actually trust.
Nearly every time I've ordered from a company with lower prices than NewEgg, I've run into problems. Shipping estimates that proved false (e.g. getting charged $15 for shipping when my order confirmation claimed $5), bad product quality + bad return policies, etc. I remember the first time I bought a GeForce4 card - The card was defective on arrival (seemingly one of the memory address lines was bad, as every N pixels were corrupt on an intermittent basis.) Obtaining an RMA was a massive pain from the company in question (some place on Long Island with customer service that barely spoke any English), and when they got the product back they claimed that they could find no problems with it. As a result I had to eat a 15% restocking fee.
NewEgg, on the other hand, has never given me any problems. (Admittedly, in the previous case Best Buy was my fallback. Their prices usually suck, but returning items to BB is ridiculously easy.)
retrorocket.o not found, launch anyway?
Uhal-truck & 2-hours
I remember those old EggHead B&M stores. Shortly after they all went away, I noticed that NewEgg sprung up online. I just assumed that NewEgg was the reincarnation of Egghead. ANyone know for sure?
It tells you EXACTLY what the $2.99 gets you.
No, they don't sit on your order without it. Yes, most of the time unless you order late in the day, it won't actually make a difference.
retrorocket.o not found, launch anyway?
"They are not set up to handle small orders like that..."
That's what Newegg tries to do, small orders. One reason to charge high shipping is to discourage dealers from buying. Another reason is to make more profit.
I've talked with a Newegg representative about this. If you buy 2, you pay twice as much shipping, even though they arrive in the same box.
Another reason to charge high shipping is to hide the true cost from search engines such as Froogle.
Another Newegg problem:
They have very little technical expertise and often sell things that are not good quality. They take NO responsibility for selling things with problems, other than to take the item back. They are very clear about this. Often there is product confusion or the information is not correct.
The last hard drive I got from them had a date of manufacture only a week and a half before I got it! I was pretty impressed. From China, to their warehouse, to me (East Coast) in 10 days is pretty darn good.
They are still there and still taking orders until 2AM for next-day shipment. At least most of the ones I remember.
What's changed is the shipping prices have gone up. With sites like Pricewatch etc., it is harder to subsidize the shipping cost by burying it in the cost of the product. Pricing is just too competitive these days. If anything, it's the opposite now, lots of places appear charge inflated shipping to subsidize the costs of the goods.
Back when you bought your Newton, these catalog places were selling things at or close to list price. They could easily afford a $3 shipping gimmick.
I buy a ton of hardware from NewEgg and I choose the 3-day FedEx option, only because most of their products ship from New Jersey and are at my door in 24 hours. But since we're not always home, we signed an agreement with FedEx that all deliveries are to be delivered to our one side door and they keep our signature on file. Up until that point, we had to sign every package at the front door. Now, FedEx leaves the package at our side door whether we're home or not and whether they need a signature or not. A bit risky, perhaps, but fortunately we live in a low-crime area that's predominantly occupied of non-geek, elderly people. :)
My only gripe with NewEgg is that, unlike those rebate-laden morons at TigerDirect, they do not have an agreement with UPromise. I'd love to have 2-4% of my NewEgg purchases go into a college fund for my kids, but I hate how just about everything on TigerDirect that I want to buy has a f*cking rebate attached to it.
The Overrated mod is for reversing inappropriate, positive mods, not for voicing disagreement with a post.
After working for Lowe's Companies for 5.5 years at their corporate offices, I have seem much more in the realm of distribution. Newegg's distribution seems like childs play compared to larger retailers like Lowe's, Walmart, Home Depot, etc... Think of 1.8 Million sq ft of warehousing. Products that are already barcoded by machine, flying down the highest speed conveyors past scanners to reach their appropriate shipping area. They service hundreds of semi-trucks a day and ship quite a bit more. Imagine instead of people doing sorting, labeling, etc, your system solves the distribution nightmares by solving the travelling saleman problem for all your trucks going to thousands of locations that sell to millions of customers. Quantity, routing, and distribution is all computerized and selected based on market sales, in-stock needs, and store orders. The only need for people is to palletize the product and get it on a truck. The sheer size of "big box" retail stores are as large as the larger of Newegg's warehouses.
For some reason after seeing this in action I'm not impressed. If you want to see some amazing things, try and get Walmart, Lowe's or similar companies to do a show and tell of their facilities. It's even more impressive when you get into the data centers they use as well. Granted, much of the marketing and business decision software is secretive and tightly kept, but the systems, remote DR fiber links sychronizing TB's of storage accross thousands of miles, and the raw power of computing is impressive. I think that's why I went to work for Lowe's in the first place. I mean, coding for IBM SP frames right out of college seemed rather appealing. Heh, and at one point I thought they were just a company that sold hammers and stuff. Who knew that retail could be so innovative with their implementations and solutions.
root 10956 5164 0 Oct 22 - 0:23 sendmail: rejecting connections: load average: 70 (isn't sendmail just too kind)
I first bought from NewEgg back in 2001. They offer great service, great prices, and are very quick to ship. The only reason I rarely use them now is because I've switched to Macs.
My one gig SD card must have been on that shelf, stopped working after a month... And somehow my USB 2.0 PCI card I had ordered turned into a TV/Radio card during shipping. The shipping docs had the correct board listed. First and last experience with NewEgg.
Buy.com wouldn't let me cancel an order before it shipped -- their auto=reply email response returned some kind of error message (I cannot recall what exactly). I returned the shipment unopened as is, since they told me I could do that and would get my account credited. I never got the credit and had no way to know that they actually received the package back. I felt scammed and choose to shop elsewhere.
Comment removed based on user account deletion
With the implementation of their for-profit shipping scheme about a year ago, it's just not worth it to shop there anymore.
Most other big hardware sellers will do buisness with Canadians (Tiger Direct etc...), why won't Newegg? It's because they hate us isn't it!
What Canadian companies do you deal with? I would love to find one that I trust.
atic.ca - Poor delivery standards (retail box wrapped in brown paper), great prices.
tigerdirect.ca - Evil all the way around
bigfootcomputers - small selection, decent shipping, 'feels like a basement operation'.
Hell, I have used many more but have blocked the experience from my memory.
I used to LOVE canada.com before they were bought by Global.
"The price good men pay for indifference to public affairs is to be ruled by evil men." ~Plato (427-347 BC)
UPS will not normally deliver something early. You get exactly what you pay for, no bonus delivery. FedEx will deliver overnight something 2nd day if your in the same city, UPS does not. As such I choose FedEx 2nd day for shipments across town as I know it comes in the day after it ships - not two days.
I have tracked UPS packages that sat for 2 days at a local depot all because they were not supposed to be deliver any earlier because it wasn't paid for.
* Winners compare their achievements to their goals, losers compare theirs to that of others.
check resellerratings.com, the egg has been dropping
Newegg has always done me right. I like 'em. They have really good prices (not the best, but still pretty great) and really good service (and great shipping prices/deals not to mention coupons all over the place on their site). Everything I have ordered from them (parts to build about 3 computers or so over the years) has come in on time and well packaged. In my opinion they are the best bang for the buck when ordering parts online.
... I want to see the RMA process. Maybe then I can understand why mine has been in processing for almost a week.
They even say "have a nice day!" UPS never does that, and trust me, I've dealt with UPS many thousands of time, at my residence and at work.
I used to work a mile from my house, so I was home for lunch and frequently saw the UPS guy; he was always friendly, and even gave a little wave when we passed on the street. On the other hand, when my wife answered the door, he always hit on her.
I hate when they won't just leave the package.
I hate it when the web store won't let me ship packages to my parents, or one of my coworkers who lives in a better neighborhood. At either of those places, UPS and FedEx will both just leave it, with no problem.
I do most of my ordering for work and generally when someone finally gets around to telling us they need something, they want it yesterday. Sigh. At any rate our local stores suck (CompUSA is probably the best local store to give you an idea) and are way overpriced so we only go there for easy to find items that are really critical to have that day.
Well the problem with net orders is that I often find that cheaper places aren't really Johnny on the Spot with getting your order out. You place an order Monday, they mess around until Tuesday or Wednesday night before actually handing it to the shipping company, and you don't get it until the next week, all the while a faculty member is yelling at you about it. Oh, and of course they are never willing to pay for next day air or anything.
Newegg I find DOES generally meet their "your shit in 2 days" goal. Part of that is because one of their warhouses is in California, so it's a pretty short hop here, part of that is that if I get the order in before about 2pm MST, they get it in a box and to UPS that night. Either way an order placed Monday is generally here Wednesday, and that's sweet.
The other thing is I rarely find myself having to go searching other vendors to find parts, or settling for a part I didn't really want. They offer a pretty broad selection of hardware and tend to keep everything in stock so usually we can pick out what we want and just get it all ordered from one place.
The suggestion is that it somehow affects your taxes, but of course it doesn't.
What do you mean, the suggestion? All of the tax forms with this box EXPLICITLY say "This will not affect the amount of your tax or refund".
I hate when they won't just leave the package.
I have a similar predicament most of the time. If they won't leave it, I wish I could have all my shipments held at the local customer service desk, by default, and notify me I have something to pick up. All their wasted effort at delivering to my door seems pointless.
Amen to that! What's even worse is that while UPS and FedEx keep making it easier to actually ship a package (in our city of about 100,000 there's one FedEx Kinko's, two UPS stores, staffed FedEx and UPS locations, and several other packaging and mailing stores), it's almost impossible to pick one up. If they require an in-person signature and you're not home when they deliver, you can have it held for will-call. But the only place you can pick it up is at the staffed location and the UPS and FedEx staffed locations are both way out on the edge of town (and FedEx and UPS are on opposite ends of town) and only open during regular business hours. If I could go to the location during regular business hours, I could also be at home to receive my package during those hours. I wouldn't mind having to sign in person if I could choose a different location--FedEx Kinko's or the UPS Store, which are within two miles of my house, for example--to pick it up at.
I've gone back and forth with newegg. Some good some bad.
Once i got the wrong video card. It was in a manuf. sealed box, so I assume it was the manufacturer's fault. Anyway, i told newegg. they were like "no problem, we'll ship the replacement over to you fast". They did... but they charged me like 30 dollars extra to overnight it. WTF?!
Overall i think they are a decent compromise... but I still haven't fully forgiven them for the screwups. They definitely have better service than some of the really cheap companies out there.
Newegg does not do ANY PO based orders from what I can tell. I have inquired about every year or so to make sure they don't silently offer it. But think about it. Newegg's goal is to provide us stuff as cheap as possible with maintaining there profit margin. Right now in only having CC orders they do not need to have an AR department to handle all of the incoming checks from company's matching them up with the invoices and marking them paid. Lots of manual steps. With the credit cards, they know its just handled. So by only acceptin credit cards, they have less employee overhead. I know at our company which only processes 60-100 orders per day we need 2 AR people. That adds up with salarys and emoployee overhead quick.
Source code is like sex. It's better when it's free.
For awhile I used to get packages delivered by UPS -- they just dumped it in my doorway or a neighbors. Half the time they didn't even bother with the "will retry later" slip.
Problem was I lived in an with lots of illegals. That's like giving crack to an addict (up yours if you think that's racist. Its not -- Mexicans in the USA illegally are by definition criminals already). This is on top of the problems with UPS damaged or lost shipments. I remember one time driving to their distribution center to get a package. After several hours of searching the zombie at the counter was ready to give up. I mentioned that he hadn't checked the boxed that had been kicked under the conveyor belt. Well, guess where they found?
Fedex shipping was what initially drove me to Newegg. UPS is my LAST option for shipping.
I eventally solved some of the problems by moving, but I will always dump a carrier, and the vendor that used them, for dropping packages in the doorway.
In the early days NewEgg was tough to beat. Great prices, great service, fast shipping. Everything one could want in a computer parts supplier. Lately though the great prices seem to have disappeared from NewEgg. Sure there is the occasional deal--but finding a better price doesn't involve too much looking. What do folks think about the new "pyramid" schemey shops that are popping up? http://store.ncix.com/, from what I understand, lets geeks "setup" their own personal stores. The geeks the get their friends/associates to shop from the their personal store and get a bit of a kickback. http://www.burnlounge.com/ is trying to do same thing with MP3 sales. The NCIX system seems a little hokey to me--but I know that dozens of my friends and family use NewEgg because of my recommendation. Might be nice to start getting a little something back for all the referrals. ** I have no involvement with any of the above companies. Just curiostiy.
What happened to cheap overnight shipping is that the price of both diesel and jet fuel has skyrocketed, costing major shippers more money to truck or fly your items from one place or another. It's caused quite an increase in shipping prices over the past few years; as long as oil is still the standard for fueling transportation, don't expect this to get any better.
Never look down your nose at others. Someday, someone is bound to see your boogers.
...Meanwhile, USA Today reported that the US trade deficit grew yet again, largely due to imported finished goods. As I look at NewEggs' warehouse, I wonder how much of the crap within - and I mean ALL of it, from the steel girders, to the stock handling equipment, to the merchandise itself - came straight off the dock in LA Harbor? I'll bet dollars to doughnuts the only significant bit of local content is the concrete in the pad, the wood in the pallets, and the woodpulp in the cardboard.
Did I say USA Today? The morons who put together the piece on the trade deficit followed the numbers with the brillant analysis that it's due to the "insatiable" demand by consumers for imported products. True, as far as it goes, but totally lacking in context. One might assume, as many a poster on /. seems to, that it's a case of the consumers screwing themselves by knowing buying foreign goods.
In fact, other than grocery items, virtually all consumer goods, even consumer durables, are sourced outside of the US. There is no "choice" involved. Emblematic of this situation is NewEgg's warehouse, replicated across the LA Basin a thousand times.
Luke, help me take this mask off
Believe It!
Newegg edits your reviews at will. I gave 4 stars(eggs) to a popular Gigabit Ethernet Intel Nic with high jumbo packet support. It didn't have an option to connect a led to it. Hours later they posted my review but bumped it to 5 stars - at least the text was unchanged.
I'm sure similar stories of edited or deleted reviews occur daily.
Unix is a standard, DOS is a standard, windows XX is not.
I was working there when you bought your Newton. That was before the 2.0 ROM's, so you might have been one of the guys who was asking me about the awful handwriting recognition. :)
Anyway, IIRC, the $3 shipping cost the company about $7, and that was only because the warehouse was adjacent to the Airborne hanger in Ohio so Airborne had no pickup costs. The boxes might have been presorted as well, so they could just roll right on the proper airplane.
So, any order with ~$10 profit was break-even or a loss, but if it kept the customer it was worthwhile for the orders of a dozen Powerbook Duos or the like which came later. If you bought a couple of those "we also have on special" then it was all profit. Those were like $1 items sold for $5.
Also, MacWarehouse was founded to lose money for the owner as a tax reduction tool. That it was successful surprised everybody.
My God, it's Full of Source!
OUTSIDE_IP=$(dig +short my.ip @outsideip.net)
NCIX has been around for years, they're pre-"web" -- they started as a bricks-and-mortar store (and they've got several around town now). They're based here, in Vancouver, Canada.
I've never used NewEgg, since shipping anything across the border is hit-and-miss. I have purchased and recommended NCIX to others, though, and it seems that there are some similarities to NewEgg - reasonably competitive prices, better than average service. As for being "pyramid" schemey, AFAIK, it's not. NCIX gives what some would varyingly call a commission, a referral fee, or an affiliate fee -- there's nothing wrong with them at all, many companies offer these.
Disclaimer: I've had an NCIX affiliate account for a few years, not that it's earned much.
Thank you for the awesome, helpful reply. I totally forgot about the "we also have on special" items. I did buy several games, floppy-calculators, and other widgets for the $5 or so extra.
I was actually very happy with my Newton. I watched the VHS video it came with and followed their handwriting learning recognition (as well used some handwriting recognition training tips from an issue of MacUser). After the first week I didn't have any problems with my Newton recognizing my combination print / cursive chicken scratch. Damn thing was almost magical. I used it long after the rubberized surface wore off. It's still in my desk drawer, but I haven't used it heavily since about 2001.
What's this about MacWarehouse being a tax writeoff? Do you know more about the history of the company? What other companies had their warehouses at the Airborne hub?
Let me refresh my memory. This was the same time period where people thought that paying shipping on 25 pound bag of dog food instead of buying it at the local store was a good idea, and that buying furniture from a 100x200 pixel picture with a 10x10 color swatch AND paying shipping to your house was a good idea, etc? Right?
Back then, everybody and their redheaded stepchild thought that you could make millions because you could sell stuff (insert drumroll here) ONLINE!
Er no. This was a couple years before anyone had even heard of Netscape. I was ordering lots of hardware and software for $3 overnight shipping from big thick montly print catalogs long before anyone was selling online. (I don't think there were too many online stores in Gopherspace). The earliest I saw MicroWarehouse/MacWarehouse advertise $3 overnight shipping was 1992, and they might have been doing that even earlier.
Oddly enough, most of the $3 shipping went away just as companies moved their catalogs online. Perhaps it was the online price competition that killed their markup and prevented them from offering such cheap shipping.
all the successful ones have easy to remember and spell names. amazon did not beat barnesandnolbes cause amazon was better in ANY way except it is easier to type
so, new companies take names that are easy to remember and spell; newegg is great that way
"Around here, UPS never just drops the package --except when it is an amazon super-saver"
Umm...how does the UPS fellow know its a super saver shipment? It's not printed on the box or the address form. Doubtful their brown database pad (that thing you sign if you have to sign for a UPS package) showing them the items within?
Around here, it seems more dependent on the weight of the package and the particular fellow delivering/the driver. I had a bunch of DVDR 50pk cakes shipped via Amazon using their premiere (once you buy in, free 2 day) service. I was in the back on the 2nd story, and I *heard* the UPS fellow drop the package and was moving to the front to see what was going on even before he rang the doorbell.
Aside: One of the reasons I don't order from Amazon as much as I'd like is because you never know who is packing or deliverying their stuff. Sometimes I get stuff loose in the box with minimal air bag/pocket fill (which is otherwise useless to prevent damage). Other times I get packages sealed down to a cardboard base and fill on top. Other times, I get the same but no fill on top so the book/dvd on top gets rubbed to death. I really wonder how much these online businesses lose business because of shitty packaging.
USPS is way behind the times. They are not set up like UPS and FEDEX are to work with businesses/corporations as easily. That is why.
It's b/c good of Bush and friends raising the price of gas. UPS and FEDEX rasied their rates.
The accurate answer: It's possible to tell the service tier from tracking number, assuming the delivery courier is actually bothering to look at it before deciding whether or not to leave a parcel. Each service tier (Red, Blue, Orange, Green,